Day three: call of the gulls

Monday morning, we boarded the bus and began our trip to Hailuoto, an island created by landlift about 20 km off the coast of Oulu. There we would visit the Bothnian Bay Research Station.

Since this required crossing the sea, we took the ferry that runs between Hailuoto and the mainland, pictured on the right.

This photo is also from the ferry stop on the mainland side. As can be seen, wind power is used in the area.

At Hailuoto, we first continued on the bus for another 20 kilometers to reach the Bothnian Bay Research Station at Marjaniemi, the western edge of the island.

Once we arrived, we had a flow learning exercise on food chains.

In order to familiarize ourselves with the vegetation and types of rock in the area, we divided into groups; some of us went looking for plants, and the others for rocks.

However, the gulls in the area did not fully appreciate the idea, and we had to watch out for the birds.

This curious find turned out not to be something out of a Stephen King movie, but the result of some kind of an art project.

Next up was to classify the findings and present them to the others.

We could barely complete this exercise before it began raining again, and we went inside for lunch. Then we thought about the things needed for a good life from various perspectives, until the sudden realization that it was less than twenty minutes to the departure of the next ferry and as many kilometers to cover in order to reach the stop.

We went back to the bus, and our driver began the race against time to catch the ferry before it leaves.